J'adore...

 "And this thing I saw! How can I describe it? A mon strous tripod, higher tha many houses, striding over th young pine-trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering metal, striding now across the heather; articulate ropes of steel dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riot of the thunder. A flash, and it came out vividly, heeling over one way with two feet in the air, to vanish and reappear almost instantly as it seemed, with the texte flash, a hundred yards nearer. Can you imagine a milking-stool tilted an bowled violently along the ground? That was the impression those instant flashes gave. But instead of a milking-stool imagine it a great body of machinery on a tripod stand."

 

H. G. WELLS - The War of the Worlds